#if you're going to have magical seasonal figures at least fuckin let them be magical. let santa have seasonal omniscience!

[mangled-by-disuse]

i just have to rant about the elf on a shelf for a sec

(why? i've never had one, i don't have kids and if i did that wee smug snitching fucker would still not feature in my life. AND YET so many of my parent friends are stressed out of their minds over the damn thing)

but like. I know the obvious (and correct) take is that the elf on the shelf is horrifying because it primes small children to accept constant surveillance as not only normal but positively benign, and the elf on the shelf is a fucking grass.

but I think there are more practical, sometimes more pernicious ways that it affects all aspects of the Christmas season, to whit:

Adding stress. like for fucking real do parents of small children not have enough to do in december must we also make it a social norm to move a doll into interesting places and keep it out of reach of pets and whatever the fuck else.

Making Santa less magical. like ok back in my day Santa did not need to send spies. Santa just knows shit. Santa does not require practical explanations. Santa is a jolly old elf who is slightly less omniscient than Jesus but only because he's seasonal. How does Santa know if you've been naughty or nice if the elves don't tell him? because he's fucking SANTA CLAUS that's it that's the whole reason. stop bringing your empiricism and logic into my childhood whimsy. Also, relatedly:

Giving children a loophole. The elf on a shelf is how Santa knows whether to bring you presents, yes? the elf on a shelf spies on children to feed back to Santa on whether they have been naughty or nice? Q.E.D. if I am sure that the elf is NOT in eyeline, I can be as naughty as I want and Santa will never know. is what I would absolutely have concluded as a child, thereby spoiling any positive behavioural effects of Santa mythos. or i would have attempted to bribe the elf. or... make him go away.

Preparing children for a lifetime of performance evaluations (derogatory). because I want to be clear that I do in fact have a problem with the underlying concept of "he knows if you've been bad or good" in the first place. shut up. another way in which santa is like jesus is that he doesn't actually need to care if you were Good. in my humble opinion Santa Claus doesn't give a fuck about your behaviour he just likes to give presents to children as many lonely old people do. (also binaries of good and bad are pretty harmful actually imo, where is the boundary for "naughty" and does it perhaps undermine the behavioural guidance if you are consistently told that Santa's love is conditional BUT that you have never once failed to pass the conditions? anyway we're getting off the topic at hand.)

Adding yet more plastic tat to the "necessary Christmas traditions" box. yes yes i am decades behind the times in complaining about the commercialisation of christmas. but i am also passionately frustrated by it. ooh we must have chocolate advent calendars (plastic trays)! we must have an elf on the shelf! we must go to a christmas market and buy more tat! let's have a christmas eve box and a (plastic) ugly christmas jumper and fucking. christmas earrings we'll wear one day a year and then lose. more! more christmas tat!!! MORE, I SAY!!!

Why he look like that?

it's such a punchable face. and yet, too small to punch. i see your unseemly enjoyment of your espionage, you perverted wee fucker. you delight in the suffering of overworked parents and overseen children alike. you disgust me.

anyway fuck elf on a shelf end broadcast